


Break

by Asterglow



Category: DCU, DCU (Animated), Young Justice, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s01e16 Failsafe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-17 01:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3509921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asterglow/pseuds/Asterglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally crashes with Dick while he and Artemis are on a break. Fluffy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break

_Arrrghh!”_

“Uh huh,” Dick replied to Wally distractedly, running his glove through the large, semi-transparent display in the cramped computer lab at Mount Justice. Maps molded and shifted and disappeared as he finished sorting the data from the latest case surrounding Two-Face and spun toward his petulant friend, who was lounging a few feet away at a standard console, feet propped up on a nearby chair.

Wally growled over the the  _Bejeweled_  “You Lose” music tinkling from state-of-the-art computer speakers. “This sucks.”

Dick ran one finger under his snug uniform collar; it was starting to itch as the Two-Face case dragged on over days. Wally was in civvies. It really shouldn’t have been, but it was always a little weird when Wally visited the Cave in civvies these days.

Dick frowned a little. _Wally wears civvies in the Cave all the time, why …?_ Another map winked out of existence as he tried to unravel the strange sense of unease.  _Hell, he was here last weekend in a t-shirt and …_  He glanced over at his annoyed friend  _… those same khaki shorts to hang out._ Shaking the feeling away with a shoulder wiggle and a stretch, he reached above his head and to the side—a little farther than a human being probably should be able to. 

Wally gaped at him a second before groaning subtly— _in boredom?_ —and turning back to the game. Propping his head lazily in one hand, he restlessly drummed his fingers against his freckles as the bright gems in _Bejeweled_  flickered and fell away on the screen. His half-eaten Power Bar plopped to the side of the keyboard as Wally tossed it after a final absentminded bite.

Dick sighed. _Maybe it was weird because he shouldn’t really be here in the first place._ Wally and Artemis had quit the Team almost three months before. It felt like yesterday and a lifetime ago at the same time.  _Am I really already used to their absence?_

The game whistled another loss for Wally, and he let his head collapse on his forearms like a whiny child.  _Bejeweled_  complained as he inadvertently mashed conflicting keys. He was even grumpier than usual these days—he and Artemis were “on a break.”

Dick learned that this could mean many things over the last few years: Artemis’s mother had decided he wasn’t worthy of her, and maybe she agreed; Wally wasn’t sure if he wanted to attend MIT or Stanford; she was sick of him forgetting their anniversary or not putting the cap back on the toothpaste.

This was the first break since they _left_ together (come on, the toothpaste thing didn’t count, and it only took Dick forty-five minutes to talk him into apologizing and getting his own tube of toothpaste to mistreat however he wanted— _because really, there were no “principles” involved in toothpaste caps)_ ,and this time, Wally still hadn’t told Dick what the break was about.

It had been three days before he had told him about it at _all_.

In fact, Dick had only found out because he’d dialed their apartment in Palo Alto, and Artemis had said in clipped tones that he should call Wally’s house in Central if he was playing hard to get, because she didn’t want to play middleman anymore.

_… Alright._

It stung a little.

That was all he had left, in a way, of his best friend— ** _knowing_  **this kind of stuff. Hearing it from him first. Being asked to help. The rest— _and Dick had no hard feelings over it, not at all, it was just the way of things_ —but, well, she’d gotten everything else. And now Wally was leaving him in the dark, without a clue as to why he was sitting here in shorts playing a boring puzzle game instead of doing … whatever … with Artemis. Dick loved a good puzzle, but _surely_ there was something more interesting than watching Dick sort through case files. 

He knit his eyebrows as he turned back to the holo-screen and tried to concentrate on the structure of a particularly strange chemical compound that rotated lazily next to the notes Tim had reported at the scene. Wally wasn’t supposed to know any case details anymore, but frankly Dick could use the physicist/chemist’s help.

_Just a consult. No big deal._

_And maybe he would stop moping._

“Hey, KF,” Dick bit his tongue at the old nickname; _whoops, not supposed to use that anymore._

But Wally lifted his head like he hadn’t noticed. “Huh?”

“Can you take a look at this compound? Tim found it in some barrels by the docks.”

Wally frowned. “Not really supposed to be …”

Dick cut him off with a quiet scoff and a smirk. “It’s not like like it’s a state secret. Need to know basis.”

His friend raised an eyebrow, still hunching reluctantly over the keyboard.

“I need to know, and you probably  _already_  do anyway, so help me out. Since when did following the rules get in the way of a good case?”

_Since when did a lot of things get in the way of a good case?_

“Uugh, fine,” Wally protested, but there wasn’t really any bite to it, and a smile twitched at the corner of his lips as he leaned back with a faux-weary sigh.

“You don’t even have to get up, princess,” Dick chuckled as he tapped away on his wrist. The image of the compound obscured the  _Bejeweled_  in the browser. He tossed aside his now unnecessary gloves and leaned over his friend’s shoulder, one hand propped on the table just next to Wally’s, peering at the rotating stick and ball structure. Wally shifted closer to the screen, too, hunching even more and squinting awkwardly at the display.

“You need glasses or something, dude?”

“No.” The reply was final enough that he didn’t question it, but Wally’s tone had an odd timbre.

Scrolling through Tim’s notes, Wally murmured almost imperceptibly to himself. Dick let him sift through the info while his free hand toyed at the edges of his mask; he’d had it on for almost 24 hours now, and it pinched. Sucking in a soft breath next to Wally’s ear as he peeled it off, his friend shot him a sideways glance as it landed next to the mouse.

“D-doesn’t that thing help you see better?”

Dick chuckled and shrugged. “Sometimes there’s nothing like naked.”

Wally blinked. “… right,” came the cold, flat-ish reply.

_Okay, “naked” is a touchy subject._

He tried to figure out how in the world it might have something with Wally’s current break-up and nasty mood. Maybe he wanted to go streaking, and she put her foot down.  _Now you’re grasping at straws, Grayson._

Snickering at the thought of Wally streaking, he folded his hand over the back of Wally’s wooden chair to support himself, fingers barely brushing his friend's back. Dick let himself enjoy the comfortable familiarity of standing close to his best friend, the feel of his shirt on the back of his hand as he drummed his fingers on the chair. That was one of things he missed most about Wally on the team: there wasn’t anyone else he could really touch. It sounded stupid, maybe, but the constant teasing punches or unnecessary elbows or arms over the shoulder or brofists or whatever were just … there just wasn’t anyone else, is all. Girlfriends were different, and, well, it was  _lonely_. Warmth radiated off the speedster now, though, and since someone had turned up the AC, a space heater was actually quite nice.

The silence dragged on. Wally was being unusually quiet.

“So it isn’t carbon based,” Dick finally interrupted, propping an arm over Wally’s shoulder to point at the molecule on the screen.

“Nope. Silicone.”

“Yeah, but look at this.” Wally dodged Dick’s head as it brushed past his cheek so the acrobat could reach the mouse. He didn’t even give Wally time to take his hand away, just impatiently put his hand over Wally’s and clicked his fingers on the buttons for him. “See—”

“Hey, what the—” Wally complained as he yanked his hand out from under Dick’s.

“Oops, sorry,” Dick barreled ahead, barely registering Wally’s annoyed frown or the way he leaned exaggeratedly away from Dick. “See here, though? I’ve never seen—”

“Dude, it’s lube.”

“Hah!” Their heads almost collided, he turned to grin at his friend so quickly. “West, get your head out of the gutt—”

“I’m serious.”

“Really?” He elbowed Wally in the shoulder jokingly and leaned in, expecting some sort of inappropriate comment, but his friend just nodded at the screen.

“Weapons grade.”

Well,  _someone_  had to fill that void: “In that case I guess I should go call Zee and tell her we’ve finally found something that can withstand even--”

“Machinery,” Wally interrupted sharply, folding his arms and swiveling away just slightly. “Something big. And hot.”

“You got that right,” Dick said with a lascivious grin, awkwardly still trying to get a laugh from Wally for his previous joke. Wally just brushed the accompanying punch in the arm away.  _Wow, things must be really bad with Artemis. What is going **on**?_

Dick tried to recover with a cough to cover his confusion and a friendly pat on the shoulder. “That’s great—but how do you know for sure?”

“The bottom half, it stabilizes the temperature of the gel—”

“Knew it!” Crowing, Dick pointed with both arms on either side of Wally’s head at the area he’d been asking about before.

“Dude, stop, you’re  _pushin_ —”

Dick was a little giddy now. “Sorry, but we’ve been trying to crack this for weeks. I bet this stuff is illegal in 49 states; we can totally nab the owner and developer, and I’m sure they’ll have ties to Two-Face.”

“I said—”

He was too busy ruffling Wally’s hair in celebration: “Man, I knew it was a long shot, but you’re—”

“I said  _stop_.”

Dick’s hand stilled in the red locks and confusion spread across his face. “Stop what?”

Wally smacked his hand away: “Stop  _teasing_!” he hissed.

_Teasing? Did Wally think he was **making fun**  of him somehow? _

He patted Wally reassuringly on the shoulder and and, smirking, he leaned down nose-to-nose to look him straight in his bright green eyes. “Pfft, you’ve only been gone three months, jerk, and even an idiot speedster like you couldn’t be off his game  _that_  fas—”

But the breath was knocked out of him as Dick suddenly found himself shoved up against the cave wall across the room, staring slacked-jawed at his friend who glowered back with a strangely intense expression.

“ _Lets see how_ ** _you_** _like_ —” Wally growled.

But before he finished his sentence, he pressed his lips to Dick’s.

They were warm and a little chapped— _how had he missed Wally’s nervous tic of licking his lips all afternoon?_ —and he flooded Dick’s senses: green eyes closed, thick red lashes brushing a freckle just below his eye, fingers digging into Dick’s collarbone where he gripped Dick’s uniform. He smelt like he did at the beginning of a mission: exhilaration and … and fear.

And he was totally silent.

He wasn’t even breathing.

Wally didn’t push the kiss, and Dick could barely do more than stare blankly at the details of Wally’s face—losing track of time, losing track of  _everything_  as he tried to recreate the pieces of the puzzle that brought them here, pieces to a puzzle that he never thought Wally even had, not in his wildest dreams, not since he was thirteen years old.

Wally finally backed off with a gasp, bright red and panting as, one hand still braced against the wall next to Dick’s head, he hunched over and stared at the worn rug in the computer room. Dick slid the couple inches to the floor, lips shiny from the kiss open in shock. He felt a little like a dog that had caught its own tail and had no idea what to do with it now that he had it.

“W-what about Artemis?” he finally stammered, and it was obviously the wrong thing to ask, because Wally groaned like someone had hit him, lolling to the side until he’d collapsed against the wall next to Dick, face skyward and buried in his palms.

He dragged his fingers down his pained expression: “What about her?”  

“Does she—” Her comment about Wally “playing hard to get” on the phone suddenly made sense. “—oh,” Dick finished lamely.

“Some break, huh?” Wally laughed. He folded his legs underneath him and sat down. “Last weekend was  _it_ , dude. My last chance. It was her mom’s birthday and I flaked.”

“But you were  _here_  last—”

“ ** _Yeah_** _, ya think?_ ”

“ _Wow_ —” Dick sat down next to him, running his fingers through his dark bangs, still mortified that he had no clue. “Wow—and this is coming from me—that’s a dick move.”

“I just …” Wally fiddled idly with a shoelace. “I didn’t want to, you know? I didn’t want to  _flake_. I didn’t want to  _go_. I didn’t want to—” he trailed off. “I didn’t know what I wanted.”

“You didn’t say anything! I would have made sure you—”

“—I didn’t want you to,” Wally interrupted, glancing at Dick sharply. “I  _definitely_  didn’t want that.”

Dick swallowed. All the times he’d ignored the way his chest hurt when he’d pep-talk Wally over the phone:  _you should say this, Artemis will like that, this is how you fix that—_

“I definitely didn’t want you sending me away.”

In retrospect, all the helping, all the sharing had been incredibly one-sided: Dick couldn’t remember the last time he’d asked Wally for anything regarding his own relationships. For starters, there wasn’t all that much to them— _why would there be? He was young; he was playing the field; he was in a dangerous line of work, and_ _what did **Wally** know anywa—?_

Dick sucked in a breath like he’d been punched in the stomach: _how un-fucking-believably backwards._  Wally should be the one giving  _him_  relationship advice.

Wally’d never  _offered_  anything of substance either, though, only elbows and wink-wink nudge-nudge, and while Dick would play the innuendo game to take the edge off, at the heart of it he didn’t really  _want_  to share.  _Because it wasn’t—_

Wally looked so young suddenly, so vulnerable, and a wave of nausea washed over Dick while struggled with a sense of deja vu, trying to remember the last time he’d seen him like that, so scared, so uncharacteristically small, trying to place the sense of creeping unease.

_—it wasn’t real._

“And I guess, in the end, I just let things shake out into what I wanted, you know?” Wally was trembling now, a familiar buzzing around his edges when he was stressed or nervous. His voice dropped to a whisper: “And I guess I wanted to stay.”

He warily peeked at Dick out of the corner of his eye, through thick red lashes. “You’re taking this pretty well. I—wasn’t even sure I should tell you—”

Dick leaned over and grabbed Wally’s shirt, grabbed it in a way that felt too familiar, in a way that he’d tried to forget for years and years, curling his fingers into the fabric on his chest. The last time he’d done this he’d dragged Wally down and  _shook_  him, nose to nose. He shook that vulnerable, small, terrified look off Wally’s face— _heartbreaking for a million reasons that he couldn’t afford to think about at that moment, he couldn’t admit and didn’t want to anyway_ —he shook that look off his face, because he knew that look meant he’d lost him. He’d lost Wally that day, with the flash of light that had swept Artemis away, he'd lost him standing on the bridge of the mother ship. But he still couldn’t bear to let him go, and Dick selfishly dragged him into the core so that he wouldn’t be alone. So that he wouldn’t be alone when he sacrificed himself and his friend and all his feelings, every forbidden little thing that had ever crossed his mind about Wally, for the good of the world.

He and Wally made it out of that explosion, but Dick left the feelings behind—left them behind to melt away in the hot, failing center of that ship. For the good of his friend.

For the good of a lot of things.

But now Dick was nose to nose with Wally again, his green eyes wide like they were that day, half-hopeful, still a little terrified, and this time he pressed his lips against him, warm and soft, the way he wished he could have that moment in the alien mother-ship before they all headed to the core, the way he wished he could have during the eight precious seconds that remained of their lives. But Dick could see it now, the smile that tugged at the corner of Wally’s lips as he kissed back, a sparkle in his eyes that  _had_ actually been for Dick—even if it was often meant for Artemis, it had also been _his_ this whole time, the way Wally’s fingers trembled at the nape of Dick’s neck as he tangled his fingers in his hair, all the signs Dick had ignored because he couldn’t dare to dream they’d mean what he hoped. Maybe _Wally_ hadn't even known it.

They were clear as day now, though, and—protege of the the World's Greatest Detective or not—Dick had never been so happy to be clueless in his life.


End file.
